GUTHRIE THEATER ADDS
TAYLOR MAC’S HOLIDAY SAUCE … PANDEMIC! 
TO ITS VIRTUAL HOLIDAY LINEUP

The vaudeville will be streamed live on December 12 at 6 p.m. CST, followed by an after-party with special guests, and available on demand December 14–16 

(Minneapolis/St. Paul) — The Guthrie Theater (Joseph Haj, Artistic Director) today announced it has added the Pomegranate Arts production of Taylor Mac’s Holiday Sauce … Pandemic! to its virtual holiday lineup. The event reimagines Mac’s beloved annual extravaganza Holiday Sauce — which the Los Angeles Times called “a present from the island of misfit toys ... and a Christmas miracle” — for this time of social distancing. Holiday Sauce … Pandemic! comes on the heels of Mac’s Holiday Sauce album release, which offers another opportunity for homebound audiences to experience Mac’s singular artistry and approach to the holidays.

Holiday Sauce … Pandemic! will be available live for one night only on December 12 at 6 p.m. CST and include a special virtual after-party with surprise guests. For those who cannot attend the live event, the performance will be available on demand December 14–16. Tickets are $10 per household and on sale through the Guthrie Box Office at 612.377.2224 (Tuesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.) and online at guthrietheater.org.

Christmas as calamity! 2020 International Ibsen Award winner and MacArthur Fellow Taylor Mac and his longtime collaborators — designer Machine Dazzle, music director Matt Ray and producers Pomegranate Arts —join together to celebrate the holidays in all of their dysfunction. Holiday Sauce… Pandemic! blends music, film, burlesque and random acts of fabulousness to reframe the songs you love and the holidays you hate. There is more to the holidays than rampant capitalism and gift giving, and in Mac’s world, creativity and imagination are their own spirituality. Through this virtual event, Mac reminds us of the collective power of our chosen families — a message that rings true in this distinctly bittersweet holiday season.

Mac dedicates Holiday Sauce to Mother Flawless Sabrina, Mac’s drag mother, who passed away three weeks before the live show made its world premiere at New York City’s Town Hall in December 2017. As a tribute to her, each institution presenting Holiday Sauce ... Pandemic! will honor a local elder who has made a significant contribution to nurturing the queer community in their city. Collectively, these elders make up a group Mac refers to as The Queens; their names will be mentioned in the show, featured on the Holiday Sauce website and amplified on social media.

The Guthrie will honor Sharon Day (Ojibwe), an artist, writer, musician, and lifelong activist in support of women, LGBTQIA+ and Indigenous peoples, as well as the life-giving force of water. Since 1990, she has served as the Executive Director of Indigenous Peoples Task Force, an organization she founded to develop and implement culturally appropriate HIV education and direct services to Minnesota’s Native community.

To create Holiday Sauce … Pandemic!, Mac joined forces with longtime creative producer Pomegranate Arts (Linda Brumbach, Founder and Director; Alisa E. Regas, Managing Director, Creative), director Jeremy Lydic, designers Machine Dazzle and Anastasia Durasova, and cinematographer Rob Kolodny. It features a full band led music director/arranger Matt Ray and including Colin Brooks, Viva DeConcini, Antoine Drye, Greg Glassman, J. Walter Hawkes, Marika Hughes, Dana Lyn, and Gary Wang; special guests Thornetta Davis, Stephanie Christi’an, and Tigger! Ferguson; and performers who make cameo appearances: Dusty Childers, Sister Rosemary Chicken, sidhe degreene, Romeo-Jay Jacinto, Glenn Marla, Travis Santell Rowland (Qween), and Timothy White Eagle.

Holiday Sauce… Pandemic! was commissioned by The International Ibsen Festival, The Norwegian Ministry of Culture and National Theatre of Oslo, who present it with additional support from the Guthrie Theater; Artpark in Lewiston, NY; ASU Gammage at Arizona State University; Berliner Festspiele; UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance; Curran in San Francisco, CA; FirstWorks/Brown Arts Initiative; Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth; Live Arts Miami; OZ Arts Nashville; Park Avenue Armory; Seattle Theatre Group; On the Boards; Stanford Live at Stanford University; Teatros del Canal in Madrid, Spain; TO Live; UtahPresents; and Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University.

For more information about Holiday Sauce … Pandemic! or the Holiday Sauce album, visit www.taylormacholidaysauce.com.

About Taylor Mac
Taylor Mac (who uses “judy,” lowercase [sic], not as a name but as a gender pronoun) is a playwright, actor, singer-songwriter, performance artist, director and producer. judy’s work has been performed at the Guthrie, New York City’s Lincoln Center, The Public Theater, Playwrights Horizons, London’s Hackney Empire, Los Angeles’ Royce Hall, Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre, Sydney Opera House, Boston’s American Repertory Theater, Stockholm’s Södra Teatern, Spoleto Festival, San Francisco’s Curran, MoMA and hundreds of other theaters, museums, music halls, opera houses, cabarets and festivals around the globe.

judy is the author of 17 full-length works of theater, including Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, Hir, The Lily’s Revenge and A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, which was presented in an abridged form at the Guthrie in March 2016.

judy is a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Drama, a Tony Award nominee (for Best Play) and the recipient of multiple awards, including the Kennedy Prize, New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, Herb Alpert in Theater Award, Peter Zeisler Memorial Award, Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, two Obie Awards and the one judy is most proud to be associated with, an Ethyl Eichelberger Award. An alumnus of New Dramatists, judy is currently a New York Theater Workshop Usual Suspect, the Resident Playwright at HERE Arts Center and the 2020 Artist in Residence at WNET’s ALL ARTS. In 2017, judy was named a MacArthur Fellow.

On December 12, in a ceremony streamed at noon CST (7 p.m. Oslo time), judy will be the first American to receive the International Ibsen Award, which is awarded every two years to an individual or company that has brought new artistic dimensions to the world of drama or theater.

To learn more about Taylor Mac, visit www.taylormac.org. 

About Pomegranate Arts
Founded by Linda Brumbach in 1998, Pomegranate Arts is an independent production company based in New York City dedicated to the development of international performing arts projects. As a creative producing team, Pomegranate Arts works in close collaboration with contemporary artists and arts institutions to bring bold and ambitious artistic ideas to fruition. With a hands-on approach, Pomegranate creates unique structures and partnerships in all performance mediums. Whether creating a new work with established artists at the peak of their career or introducing the vision of a younger artist, Pomegranate specializes in producing provocative performance events of the highest quality. Learn more at www.pomegranatearts.com.

THE GUTHRIE THEATER (Joseph Haj, Artistic Director) is an esteemed center for theater performance that seeks to illuminate our common humanity and transform our world through the power of live theater. Based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and firmly rooted in the community since 1963, the Guthrie is dedicated to producing classic and contemporary works with excellence, cultivating artists and inspiring the next generation of theatergoers. guthrietheater.org